Just The Tip (Of The Iceberg): Why the Women’s Marches are about more than just Trump

I’ve seen some posts by people trying to downplay all the Women’s Marches as merely being about impotently protesting Trump only.

These marches are about SO MUCH MORE than protesting one man.

Why are women being vilified for wanting to be regarded as being of equal value as men are in society?

There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction when women report having been treated unfairly or having seen such. For some weird reason, this is interpreted as “hating men”. We are told there’s “no need” for the feminist movement, and that women who support that movement are to be feared and hated.

(Swap the ‘w’ for a ‘b’ and you’ll see the REAL reason women who practiced herbal medicine and lived outside the strictures of patriarchal society were persecuted, hunted down and slaughtered as “witches”)

Well, there most certainly IS a need for the feminist movement because:

When a woman shows up in the ER, her level of pain must be SIGNIFICANTLY higher than a comparable male’s in order for her to be taken seriously that it’s not somehow ‘all in her mind’.

Women’s heart attack symptoms are SIGNIFICANTLY different than a male’s, yet the only symptoms shown in mainstream media are male symptoms – resulting in fewer women being able to self-identify when they are having a heart attack and fewer people around them taking their symptoms seriously.

Those are just two examples. Here’s another:

How many women have experienced this: whether in work, school, in a relationship or social/other setting, if a woman has an idea it gets downplayed, ridiculed, ignored, but afterwards, if a male voices that same idea, it gets lauded as though it were the most brilliant idea, despite the male most likely having merely copied the idea from the female that voiced it first.

And another:

How many times have we seen the military being portrayed in TV/movies like this: The drill sergeant addresses the new recruits: “Listen up, ladies!” or compares them to “women” in a way that indicates being like a woman is somehow weak, inferior, of less value than being a man.

And another:

Men are so terrified to be equated with women, that men who are sexually assaulted (whether by another man or by a woman), or who are the victims of domestic violence, are seldom able to report this to the authorities for fear of being seen as occupying a “lesser” role – the “female” role. And the ones who do bravely attempt to report this, sadly often find themselves being re-victimized by the authorities (as they do to victims of both genders), whether by outright ridicule or by disbelief, because supposedly “real men” don’t get raped or abused, only the “weaker” sex – women – do.

And another:

From a very young age, boys are programmed by society to not express “feminine” emotions or preferences. “Boys don’t cry. Men don’t cry.” “Pink is for girls, blue is for boys.” “Superheroes are for boys, princesses are for girls.” “Dolls are for girls, only the mother should take care of the baby/kids.” “Housework is women’s work.”

And another:

“Girls aren’t good at math.”

(Go see the movie “Hidden Figures” to disprove that one.)

And another:

Practically any industry or occupation that was initially male dominated (due to societal discrimination against women), was respected and thought highly of. After society relaxed it’s prohibition against women entering the workplace and women began entering those professions, whether teaching, cooking, computer programming, real estate, the sciences, men began disdaining those professions as suddenly not being “as hard as” other still-male-dominated professions, despite the women working just as hard as, and in some cases, even harder, than the men in those professions had.

When men then began to enter previously female-dominated professions that had been ridiculed as being “women’s work” and therefore less respected, those men were ridiculed for doing “women’s work”…until a large enough percentage of men had entered that industry, then suddenly those professions gained respect and legitimacy in the eyes of society: nursing, for example.

And another:

When a woman has a legitimate grievance, she is blown off and asked if she’s having “that time of the month”. When a man has a grievance, there is no brushing it off as being due to temporary hormonal surges and therefore not worth paying any heed to, regardless of the legitimacy of the grievance.

And another:

Men who lead are praised as having executive leadership abilities. Women who lead are called “bossy” and “bitches”.

Trump is only the very visible, very loudmouthed, tip of the iceberg. Women weren’t protesting and marching “only” against Trump, they were protesting against the entire iceberg that taken as a whole is harmful to both women AND men.

And that is why we need feminism.

Not because we want to “feminize” men, but because sexism, misogyny and prejudice against women and stereotypically “feminine” characteristics (whether exhibited by women OR men) is wrong.

And don’t even get me started on the globally pervasive (sometimes even directed at hetero folks) homophobia that is also a result of “feminine” characteristics being deemed “weak” and “wrong” for men, and “masculine” characteristics being deemed “strong” and “wrong” for women!